Shortage of packs getting beyond a joke

Am really really ticked off now after coming away from my meeting. They only had strawberry and banana packs!!! That's it!! and lemon bars and fruit bars!! Honestly don't think I am going to be able to cope without my chocolate packs as I can hardly stomach the tohers. I'm going to have to drive all the way through to sunderland again this week to see if they have any to swap on monday.

It's a franchised business and my LLC doesn't seem to have any idea how to run her business sometimes, she obviously doesn't order enough packs, and once again she wasn't even here to speak to about it. Another locum and this time a right **** she said to me...sounds like you have an addiction to the chocolate ones, thats not good you should be able to have them all. Why cant you just take these ones? We didn't even have a proper group, just sat there talking about other stuff! Honestly feel like I've gone there and handed over £66 for nothing today.

There we go, I've had my little rant. If I wasnt doing so well I've had told her to go stick it today

I feel your pain Donna, I left with NO packs at all today, luckily we had some left over from when I wasn't having all my packs so I'm ok.

I can't believe today I had to go from getting up at 3am to 1pm with no packs, which would've been a struggle even if I WASN'T dizzy and ill

The situation with the nurse is not acceptable, (again, even if I wasn't ill I wouldnt' be happy about not having the health check which is supposed to be essential!) and the lack of organisation and passing the buck is ridiculous.

Me and OH paid £132 today, he left with half his packs (after waiting for 3 hours for the delivery that never came) and I left with nothing. We've paid nearly £2,000 between us, he's never had his 'before' photograph taken, was never even told about milk week, and his group is a mixture of new starters, those on management, those in foundation as well as those on development. Total waste of money, we're not getting what we have been paying for

Are you nearer chester le street Donna? There is a counsellor there, maybe she's got some chocolate packs?

Personally I have decided to switch to Cambridge Diet. I'm going to try the 790 calorie version to see if I feel any better on that, and will consider going back to LL for Route to Management if there is a dedicated group available.

To top it all, I'm disappointed with my weight loss again (half a stone in a month ) I think my body is sort of rebelling against the diet, and is using as few calories as possible resulting in me feeling so ill. Hopefully on the 790 plan my body may co-operate more.

I feel your pain Donna, I left with NO packs at all today, luckily we had some left over from when I wasn't having all my packs so I'm ok.

I can't believe today I had to go from getting up at 3am to 1pm with no packs, which would've been a struggle even if I WASN'T dizzy and ill

The situation with the nurse is not acceptable, (again, even if I wasn't ill I wouldnt' be happy about not having the health check which is supposed to be essential!) and the lack of organisation and passing the buck is ridiculous.

Me and OH paid £132 today, he left with half his packs (after waiting for 3 hours for the delivery that never came) and I left with nothing. We've paid nearly £2,000 between us, he's never had his 'before' photograph taken, was never even told about milk week, and his group is a mixture of new starters, those on management, those in foundation as well as those on development. Total waste of money, we're not getting what we have been paying for

Are you nearer chester le street Donna? There is a counsellor there, maybe she's got some chocolate packs?

Personally I have decided to switch to Cambridge Diet. I'm going to try the 790 calorie version to see if I feel any better on that, and will consider going back to LL for Route to Management if there is a dedicated group available.

To top it all, I'm disappointed with my weight loss again (half a stone in a month ) I think my body is sort of rebelling against the diet, and is using as few calories as possible resulting in me feeling so ill. Hopefully on the 790 plan my body may co-operate more.

Right now, I feel angry, disappointed, ill and tired

Click to expand...

Oh no Jo I will miss you if you go! Who can I talk to?! I dunno...maybe I should go on to the chester le street LLC. I want to stick with LL though as it's working great for me. I'm going to see how she is over the next couple of weeks and make a decision from that. Is your hubby going to cambridge aswell?

Donna... Dunno if it helps and I'm assuming u live farrrrrr from me, but I have heaps of chocolate packs here, so if u wanna swap I could send some over to u??? If u wanna swap I will get them in the post Monday, just PM me

Switch to Cambridge. It seems to me that you LLC is not professional at all and why give hand over money for such a poor service? Like of of the other posters said there is more variety on Cambridge and you don't get told off for selecting certain flavours. We are all on a forum because we have food issues, but even if we didn't and were stick thin, people have different tastes in food and given that LL, LT, CD etc are VLCD's and hard going people should be allowed to select from the limited choice there is, if only in order to keep on track and stay on the wagon.

Its shocking that she dos not provide the range of food that you pay for!
I have about 30 odd clients now and I never run out of food! I think once when I first started I ran out of tomato soup... not bad seeing as there are 17 Cambridge vareties!

Your post caught my eye and I just had to post an answer (sorry, I don't get onto Minis as much as I would like). I used chocolate packs almost exclusively throughout the second half of my time on LighterLife so you are not addicted or strange or..alone. It's important to use the packs that you enjoy, which leads me to my second point.

You absolutely must let LighterLife head office know for several reasons:

as a client you should always have access to the full range (you are, after all, a paying customer and you are paying for packs and counselling);

you should not be told by locum that you might have an addiction to certain packs (not sure if Chunky Chicken has a view on this - as a (fantastic) locum);

finally, your LighterLife Counsellor is there to support your journey. That doesn't mean they are on call 24 hours a day but they are there to ensure you have everything you need ie packs and counselling.

Please do let LighterLife Head Office know and put it in writing. I am pretty certain they still don't monitor forums like this so unless they are told, they are not going to find out.

The other advice I give is shop around for the right counsellor. I did not go to my nearest one because I just didn't click with her and from the introductory session it was clear that there was no real empathy there. We all do the LighterLife diet ourselves, absolutely, but the counsellor is critical (well, mine was and continues to be).

I wish you every success and you have every right to feel peeved! And what lovely fellow Minis there are here who are willing to step in and help.

Thanks so much mrs Lard for your lovely reply, mad me feel loads better. The way I figured is if the way I get through it is sticking only to one or two packs that I like (and I still havent lapsed once!) then what does it matter? I thought exactly the same that we are infact paying customers, theyre running a business and we are thier customers! The problem as Jo said is our LLC is nice, just not really very organised. The nurse hasn't been in to do our blood pressure tests and we've been due them for two weeks!

Oh well, I'm not as angry now, just struggling on with the banana ones she gave me and so looking forward to tomorow night when she's going to be in her office so I can drive through and swap for my chocolate ones.

Think I will let head office know, although I've never been one for wanting to get people into trouble. I still think this diet is hard enough without being denied certain things from our LLCs. x

Oh p.s

Thanks for your kind offer Lighterlife claire, I will be ok as I am getting some choc tommorow from my LLC. Thanks loads though thats really nice of you! x

The only restrictions we have are only being allowed to order 2 cranberry and 2 peanut bars each a week but that's manufacturing shortages not our LLC - everything else she has loads of and she runs about 8 groups a week.

First and foremost, the relationship you have with your LLC (and/or Locum) can be confusing. Everyone wants to be liked (as a counsellor) but to be effective at your job, it is not a necessity. From the counselling we can become quite close and friendly with our clients and genuinely enjoy their company, but at times, we need to be able to challenge clients to redress their thinking and keep them on track. Unfortunately (and this has been the hardest thing to learn) we can go from being your friends to the enemy in a few short sentences regardless of whether we have your best intentions in mind at the time.

However, the way the locum in your post spoke to you is totally unprofessional. Instead of challenging you to re evaulate your thinking in a positive way, she came down all critical parent on you - basically telling you off. The only thing that is going to do is make you angry. I also do not see the logic in her statement either. Just because you happen to like only one flavour of foodpack does not make you addicted!! It is a very strange thing to say. At a stretch, perhaps she was thinking that you were unable to see the packs as fuel rather than something to be enjoyed... I don't agree with that school of thought personally (I might point out hastily), I did everything I could when I was in abstinence to make my foodpacks more enjoyable and still learnt one hell of a lot along the way!!

I think it is a failing of LL sometimes that the Locum counsellors are not as heavily trained as the main counsellors, but they still have contact with clients in the same way - just not as regularly. My counsellor spends a lot of time and energy giving me one-to-one training to improve my skills - however this is not mandatory I am just one of the lucky ones.

In future when something happens that you are not 100% happy with - you MUST make sure that you let the counsellor involved know at the earliest opportunity. That way, she has the opportunity to do something about it long before HO needs to be involved. We all make mistakes and everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt once or twice.
BUT...
If you have tried this approach and failed to see improvement - then you definitely need to contact Head Office to make them aware. All the hard working counsellors out there can soon be dragged down by the odd few who just don't care and do the minimum amount of work. They need to be brought up to standard or get their freeloading backsides a new job.
Laura backs down from her soapbox and apologises for the outburst..... LOL

I think I need a nice coffee after that...
Hope you get your packs sorted soon Donna - now go whip that LLC into shape!

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